The Equator Trivia
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49 free The Equator trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Equator is an imaginary line, but it has a monument that is in the wrong place, a mountain that beats Everest, a naval initiation involving King Neptune, and eleven countries arguing over who owns the most of it. This quiz covers the geography and the physics first: the length of the line, why it is the only great circle of latitude, the equatorial bulge, why rockets launch from Kourou, why the Sun sets so fast there, and why the days are always twelve hours long. It also covers what lives on the line: the tropical rainforest climate, the doldrums, snow on Volcan Cayambe, and the Coriolis myth about draining bathtubs. The second half is the human Equator: Sao Tome, Gabon, the two Congos, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, the Maldives, Indonesia, Kiribati, the Galapagos, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil; the French Geodesic Mission of 1736 that fixed the line and helped define the metre; the Mitad del Mundo monument that missed by 240 metres; Null Island; and the shellbacks and pollywogs of the line-crossing ceremony that Charles Darwin endured on the Beagle. Easy questions ask which hemispheres it divides; the expert tier asks for radii, cities and dates. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Equator, the line-crossing ceremony, Mitad del Mundo, the French Geodesic Mission and related topics, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on world geography and on Ecuador.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Equator divides Earth into which two hemispheres?
Northern and Southern
Northern and Southern. The seasons flip across the line: Earth's tilt turns one half toward the Sun at a time, so a July summer in the north is a July winter in the south.
Q 02What is the latitude of the Equator?
0 degrees
0 degrees. Nature fixes latitude's starting line midway between the poles, but longitude's had to be agreed by vote: an 1884 conference in Washington chose the meridian through Greenwich.
Q 03About how long is the Equator?
About 40,000 km
About 40,000 km. Around 240 BC the Greek scholar Eratosthenes came close to that figure by comparing noon shadows in two Egyptian cities a known distance apart.
Q 04The word "equator" comes from a medieval Latin phrase meaning what?
Circle equalizing day and night
Circle equalizing day and night. The name first belonged to the sky's equator: when the Sun crosses it, twice a year, day and night are the same length.
Q 05Leaving the Equator in March, the overhead Sun moves north until June, when it reaches which line?
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer. It was named some 2,000 years ago, when the June solstice Sun stood among the stars of Cancer; the sky has since drifted, and the Sun no longer does.
Q 06Which term do navigators use for a circle, like the Equator, that cuts a globe into two equal halves?
Great circle
Great circle. The shortest route between two places follows one, which is why long flights between northern cities curve up toward the Arctic instead of tracking a line of latitude.
Q 07What are the two days each year when the noon Sun stands directly over the Equator called?
Equinoxes
Equinoxes. The March one opens the year in Iran and its neighbours, where Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is timed to the event and marks the first day of spring.
Q 08Which effect of the atmosphere lets people at the Equator see the Sun before it has truly risen?
Refraction
Refraction. Air bends the Sun's light over the horizon at both ends of the day, so daylight at the Equator outlasts night by several minutes all year instead of splitting 12 hours each.
Q 09Why are sunrises and sunsets shortest at the Equator?
The Sun's path is nearly vertical
The Sun's path is nearly vertical there, so it clears the horizon fast and civil twilight, the bright first stage, is over in under half an hour; near the poles it can last for weeks.
Q 10What makes Earth bulge about 43 km wider at the Equator than pole to pole?
Its spin
Its spin. It flings the planet's middle outward, and the faster the spin the bigger the bulge: Saturn, whose day lasts under 11 hours, is about a tenth wider than it is tall.
Q 11Why are spaceports such as the one at Kourou, French Guiana, sited near the Equator?
Earth's surface moves fastest there
Earth's surface moves fastest there, quicker than the speed of sound, which gives every eastward launch a free running start, so the same climb to orbit burns less fuel.
Q 12In 1976 eight countries on the Equator claimed to own which of these, high above their territory?
The geostationary orbit
The geostationary orbit. Satellites there sit directly above the Equator and keep pace with the ground below, so the eight called the slots overhead their own natural resource.
Q 13Which American author wrote the 1897 travel book Following the Equator?
Q 21Which tiny Pacific island nation lies within 100 km of the Equator, just to its south?
Nauru
Nauru. Phosphate mining tore up the island's interior, leaving a forbidding plateau of jagged limestone pinnacles where most of the land used to be.
Q 22Which Pacific nation straddles both the Equator and the 180th meridian, putting it in all four hemispheres?
Kiribati
Kiribati. The International Date Line swings far to the east around its outer islands, a move the country made itself in 1995 so that all of it would share one calendar day.
Q 23The Galápagos Islands, which straddle the Equator, belong to which country?
Ecuador
Ecuador. It claimed the islands in 1832, two years after becoming an independent state, under a name that is simply the Spanish word for 'equator'.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain. Bankrupted by a failed typesetting machine, he set off around the world on a lecture tour to repay his creditors in full, then turned the trip into the book.
Q 14Which is the only country crossed by both the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn?
Brazil
Brazil. The Equator clips its far north while the Tropic of Capricorn runs through São Paulo state, so most of the country lies inside the tropics.
Q 15Which of these Asian cities lies closest to the Equator?
Singapore
Singapore. Sitting about 137 km from the line, it has no true seasons: the weather stays warm and wet all year, and the days barely change in length.
Q 16The Equator's exact position shifts by a few metres each year because what wobbles?
Earth's rotation axis
Earth's rotation axis. The Equator is defined as the circle at right angles to it, so when the poles wander a few metres, nudged by shifting water and air, the line moves too.
Q 17Most of the Equator's length passes over what?
Open sea
Open sea. Nearly four-fifths of the line lies over water, the Pacific stretch alone running about two-fifths of the way round the globe, so only 11 countries have any land on it.
Q 18Which of these South American countries does the Equator cross?
Colombia
Colombia. The line crosses its thinly peopled jungle south and misses Peru by a whisker: Peru's northernmost point lies only a few kilometres below it.
Q 19Which country straddles the greatest length of the Equator across land and sea?
Indonesia
Indonesia. Its islands string out along the line for about 5,000 km, far enough from east to west that the country keeps three time zones.
Q 20Despite its name, which country lies entirely off the Equator?
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea. Its mainland and main island lie just north of the line and its island of Annobón lies south of it, so the country straddles the Equator without ever touching it.
Q 24Macapá, whose monument marks the Equator, stands at the mouth of which river?
Amazon
Amazon. Macapá stands on the delta's northern channel, where the river pours out about a fifth of all the world's river water, enough to dilute the sea's salt more than 160 km from shore.
Q 25Which provincial capital on the island of Borneo sits directly on the Equator?
Pontianak
Pontianak. Twice a year the noon Sun passes straight overhead there and, for a few moments, its Equator monument and everything around it cast no shadow.
Q 26Which great African lake does the Equator cross?
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria. Africa's largest lake is the chief reservoir of the Nile, so water that leaves it almost on the Equator can end its journey in the Mediterranean.
Q 27The Equator passes just north of the summit of which African country's highest mountain?
Kenya
Kenya. The country is named after Mount Kenya, not the other way round, and in all of Africa only Kilimanjaro stands higher.
Q 28The Equator crosses which island, the largest in the Galápagos?
Isabela
Isabela. The seahorse-shaped island formed when several volcanoes grew together, and the line cuts across one at its northern end, Wolf, the highest peak in the Galápagos.
Q 29Heading east from the Prime Meridian, the Equator first touches land in which country?
São Tomé and Príncipe
São Tomé and Príncipe. The line only clips Ilhéu das Rolas, an islet off the southern tip, while the main island of São Tomé stops just short of it.
Q 30Where the Equator meets the Prime Meridian in the Gulf of Guinea, mapping software jokingly places what?
Null Island
Null Island. There is no land at the spot, where a lone weather buoy was moored for years; the name flags records that software has mapped there because their real location was missing.